(Graphic/TheStatehouseFile.com)
This story was originally published by TheStatehouseFile.com.
By Jack Sells
Special to TheStatehouseFile.com
June 30, 2026
The United States of America turns 250 this year. That’s pretty old for a republic. Consider how Founding Father and alleged turkey superfan Benjamin Franklin described the government all the way back in 1787: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Well, we’ve kept it long enough to celebrate its semiquincentennial, and when an occasion such as this comes about, the number of people engaging with the history of America increases.
While historians go through years of school and specialized training, many of the fundamentals come naturally to humans. It doesn’t take a Ph.D., a master’s or even a bachelor’s to reach back to the past to learn about someone or something.
If you want to look back at the history of America in preparation for the big two-five-oh but feel daunted by that prospect, simply consider what we do for a family member’s birthday: We celebrate them and who they are by looking back on their life and reminiscing.
One way we do this on birthdays—as well as when historians dig into the past—is through primary sources, which are artifacts from the time period or by people who experienced a particular event.
There are often a lot of primary sources at birthday parties. You may get to see photos of Grandma when she was a toddler (or an angsty teen). Maybe there are even home videos.
For celebrating America’s birthday, the words of our country’s leaders are a primary source.
Read the Declaration of Independence and consider how the Founding Fathers viewed the role of government, as well as everything Britain was doing to cause the colonies to declare independence.
Read President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. In less than 300 words, Lincoln built off the Declaration of Independence’s view of America’s purpose during a tumultuous time that had the potential of ending the American experiment.
Read or watch Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Almost 200 years after the Declaration of Independence, which it also references, how does King view its legacy, and how does he use it in the argument he’s making?
Read or watch President Ronald Reagan’s address to the nation in 1986 after the space shuttle Challenger exploded. What ideals did the president appeal to in the wake of a tragedy?
We also rely on secondary sources—works of history done by those not there—to celebrate people.
Take for example your mom describing your grandma’s childhood.
Your mom wasn’t there to experience it, but she has heard stories and seen pictures (primary sources), by which she can give an account of what it was like (secondary source).
On birthdays, accuracy often takes a backseat because factual telling isn’t really the goal. There might be embellishment or genuine misremembering of events that took place decades ago, but we’ve accepted that it’s OK so long as the spirit of the person is captured in the retelling.
This isn’t to say the truth doesn’t matter when celebrating someone—it does matter, and especially when doing history—but stories that communicate that essence of someone or something can also be useful for understanding.
In history, secondary sources are what historians create: scholarly articles, books, documentaries and textbooks.
Historians are constantly interacting with secondary sources to help guide their own research.
Historical movies are also secondary sources and can work much like the stories we hear at birthday parties.
Think of movies about America on a spectrum in terms of accuracy.
On one side, there’s popular history like Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln.” This movie attempts a pretty faithful retelling of what occurred with Lincoln and the Civil War but in a way for mass consumption by the public. It’s definitely not a scholarly article with footnotes and citations.
A little further over, you have what could be classified as “based on a true story.” The musical “Hamilton” would fall here. Many more liberties—pun intended—were taken for the sake of storytelling.
(There is no historical evidence that King George III sang his views on John Adams.)
And then you have a genre called “Americana” even further down the line. These movies are about capturing a feeling or time period in America’s history.
The 2025 movie “Train Dreams” can be placed here. The story is fictional—a man in the Pacific Northwest in the early 20th century tries to find meaning after a personal tragedy—but it has an undercurrent that shows the technological innovation and progress that occurs in America during the character’s life.
While it can seem silly to personify a country by viewing July 4 as literally America’s birthday, it’s a helpful metaphor for citizens to engage with the fact that their country has been around for 250 years.
As illustrated above, celebrating a birthday can be very similar to how a historian learns about someone or something.
Primary sources like photos, documents and speeches are analyzed to help us peek into a past world. Secondary sources, or the histories created after the fact, provide a general understanding based on primary sources.
So if you want to celebrate Independence Day by looking into the history of this country, don’t feel intimidated or out of your depth.
You don’t need to spend multiple hours a day reading some giant history book with even more citations than pages.
Read a speech from a president you’re interested in; watch one of the aforementioned movies.
On a birthday, you’re not needing an extensive biography on the person. You just want to celebrate them by understanding who they are—and how they became who they are.
The same can hold true for the United States on its 250th birthday.
Jack Sells was an award-winning Statehouse File reporter majoring in journalism and history before graduating from Franklin College in 2025. He now teaches social studies to Central Indiana high-school students.
